NYC is called by many residents “the greatest city in the world.” I’m sure if you like that sort of thing, it’s great.

Yet that’s hard for me to buy that right now, what with the violent crime rate there soaring. Murders are happening all over the place and that’s just part of the story.

Then you’ve got the governor claiming that talk about crime is a GOP hoax.

But crime is very real, and because it’s real and because New York City has so many folks, you’re bound to get some odd stories. Like, say, this one:

At least three people were shot across the city overnight – including a latex-glove-wearing bicyclist fatally gunned down while pedaling to pull off a suspected hit himself, cops and police sources said.

The slain 26-year-old man was riding a bike at Crown Street and Rogers Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, around 2 a.m. Tuesday when he was blasted in the head by a drive-by shooter in a dark-colored sedan, cops said.

The victim – who had been arrested a dozen times in the city – was wearing black rubber gloves when he was shot, and investigators believe he had planned to carry out a shooting with two other guys, police sources said.

He was rushed to the Kings County Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead.

The shooting is believed to be gang-related.

If that doesn’t sum up the crime issues in NYC, I don’t know what will.

I mean, the guy was going to try and kill someone, but got shot and killed himself. It’s like a bad episode of Law & Order.

Yet with that many people and that many criminals, it’s really only a matter of time before something like that happens. You don’t become a violent criminal overnight. This guy had been arrested numerous times before. It’s also likely he’d made a number of enemies.

It’s not surprising someone had a beef with him.

But let’s also remember that good old NYC still has extensive gun control regulations, with large portions of the city currently declared “gun-free zones.” None of that was stopping this guy nor whoever killed him from their nefarious tasks.

Why, it’s almost like gun control doesn’t do crap for violent criminals, either in New York City or anywhere else.

Funny how that shakes out.

But I’m sure this is all just part of that Republican crime hoax Gov. Kathy Hochul went on about. It couldn’t be a real thing or anything, it has to be something far more nefarious.

It’s laughable, at best.

This is a bizarre case, but it’s also a prime example of just what the problem is like in NYC. It’s also a case of bad guys killing bad guys, which wouldn’t bother me so much except they tend to miss and hurt innocent people with their crap.

That’s not a hoax, either, even if it’s more convenient for Hochul to pretend that it is.

After all, why deal with the issue when you can just pretend it doesn’t exist?